UK Nuclear Site's Clean-Up Costs Rise To £136 Billion (theguardian.com) 56
The cost of cleaning up the U.K.'s largest nuclear site, "is expected to spiral to £136 billion" (about $176 billion), according to the Guardian, creating tension with the country's public-spending watchdog.
Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.
Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.
Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.
"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "
"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.
Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.
Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.
"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "
"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
UK is no longer in EUrope
They Brexited
Re:Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
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Re: Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
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UK is no longer in EUrope
They Brexited
Europe (a continent) is not the same thing as the European Union (an economic union of member states mostly in Europe of which the UK is no longer a part).
As much as we wish they would crack the continental shelf and float away into the ocean, the UK alas is still in Europe.
Re: Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
If weâ(TM)re going to get all pedantic, Europe is really only a continent in name only. Eurasia is the physical landmass. If Europe is a continent then so is India.
Re: (Score:2)
If Europe is a continent then so is India.
India, with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and any other bits I have missed, are often referred to as a "subcontinent".
From the start... (Score:5, Informative)
Why are costs always higher than projected? (Score:3)
Up-front starting costs, yearly maintenance costs, and up-front shutdown costs, are all known values at the time the design is finalized.
The story says the "known values" in 2019 were under current estimates by 20%. The reality is that the upfront cost projections are all based on theoretical models because there is no real experience with many of the costs. How do you accurately estimate the cost of permanent storage when no one has ever actually built a permanent storage facility. Your estimates are little more than educated guesses by people with an interest in low-balling the cost.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
We'll be happy to explain to the rest of the world how to do it if they ask.
https://www.nwmo.ca/# [www.nwmo.ca]
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Here in Canada every kWh of nuclear energy produced has included a surcharge for future waste handling.
The UK did that too. But the government raided that fund for other purposes.
Hurry up guys! (Score:2)
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"It'll be safe in a few hundred years"
Uh huh. And even if I believed that (the worst stuff actually stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years), we haven't managed to reliably store such waste for mere decades. Telling me we'll be fine storing it for 10x as long? Fuck off.
Humans have a lot of trouble planning much more than a couple of decades out, and that's for people who are really abnormally good at it.
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Probably about the same as the uranium mines. The Navajo have experience there. Also about the same for the bitumen sands, which is a huge disaster in slow motion easily visible from space.
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.... the worst stuff actually stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years ... we haven't managed to reliably store such waste for mere decades.
The stuff that lasts longer is the stuff that has lower emissions because it has a lower decay rate. There is no technical problem with storing it, it is a political problem.
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I think it is insane to expect reliable storage of anything dangerous but with negative value for more than a few election cycles.
The 'technical problem' is ensuring the site is perfectly stable with zero maintenance because you can't be assured there will be any will to do anything for the full lifetime of the issue. Or even in a decade or so.
Without that, you have to anticipate the site will eventually leech into the local water table.
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Low decay rate is irrelevant.
Relevant is: what do they emit.
And relevant is: how much stuff is that?
And even more: is it "stored safe" as in, can not escape from the container into the environment.
And in case you missed it, that storage has a huge amount of plutonium.
And perhaps you might want to read something about nuclear waste instead of parroting false US school teaching, like "lower decay rate"
Plutonium ... what exactly does it radiate which makes it so dangerous? Hm?
You can google it, and you would b
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Wait they don't know what to do with the existing decades old nuclear waste, STILL?!? Pro-nuke folks are pie in the sky impractical dolts.
As a pro-nuke dolt, and in fact working in the industry, we know how to deal with nuclear waste safely. The problem is that politicians won't allow us to do it because they are frightened of public opinion and the greenies. They just ignore the situation and allow it to become worse. The greenies actually want the problem to become worse as an embarassment to the industry and to government, because they are basically anti-establishment left-wingers.
Call me skeptical (Score:1)
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they could bury the whole site under 100 feet of concrete for that much money.
A very tall parking lot is not the desired outcome.
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The problem is below, not above. Then it still has to go somewhere.
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Burying it in concrete would be a disaster, because all the waste would leak out of the bottom.
That's the core of the problem. It's already leaking badly, and it keeps getting worse as the site deteriorates. The people trying to clean it up are at great risk, and progress is slow.
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Distribute it to millions of locations to solve the long term problem by putting small portions of it in the backyard of everybody who has and continues to advocate for nuclear power as the solution to all our energy problems!
The never advocate the NEW plants be put in their backyards either...
Coal on the other hand has exposed all of us to more radiation than nuclear and we've been relatively ok with that. If gas had to be leaded we'd all still be 12 IQ points lower and likely denying global warming...
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NIMBY people are why I don't give a shit about climate change. Enjoy. You deserve it.
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We definitely need to get rid of coal ASAP, and not by burning it as the wags like to suggest.
Lots of these fans think they would love to have a SMR in their back yard, that lack of imagination is the problem with them in the first place.
Nothing where if you live near it you have to have signage about sirens and warning alerts is a good idea to build near habitation and run for profit. But people live everywhere now.
Need to reprocess the waste not bury it (Score:2)
Considerable fuel can be recovered from so called nuclear waste products. Much better, lower risk, and cheaper long term that storing it somewhere for the future generations to deal with.
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Not economically though, that's the issue.
And if it was economical, they wouldn't start with with Sellafield because just getting the waste out of there is a hazardous job.
A lot of it isn't spent fuel, it's other high level waste that can't be recycled.
Sellafield is a reprocessing plant (Score:2)
Sellafield is a reprocessing plant. As TFS says, it's the world's largest store of plutonium, and that's because it's one of the world's biggest reprocessing facilities where they extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. The waste they're talking about is the really nasty stuff left over after the useful stuff has been extracted using the PUREX process. It's very nasty chemically as well as radioactively, due to all the acids and solvents required to separate the metals (particularly uranium and pluton
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It's all useful, if only for heat. The problem is it isn't economic to use most of it.
How about this: Melt it into a slurry and cast it into blocks the size of a sugar cube, Embed that cube in an outer layer of glass to double it's size. Bury them at the bottom of the asphalt in a road that you're building. Have a road with built-in deicing, and less environmental damage than spreading salt around. (If this proposal is too dangerous, put down a layer of asphalt before you put down the cubes, and space
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They have a ton of mixed waste from early reactors and weapon development, not the clean fuel assemblies normal reprocessing plants are build for.
Maybe for a couple 10s of Billions you could make a reprocessing plant for the slop they have to work with, but will that be cheaper?
Send it to China (Score:3)
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China has plenty of their own crap that they can't deal with already
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That's a proposal dating back to at least the 1950's. But someone showed that eventually some of the stuff would leach out of the glass. The reports I read didn't estimate how much, or how long it would take, or how dilute the radioactive stuff would be. But it wasn't perfect, so people were scared.
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The problem and cost for this clean-up has nothing to do with where to put the waste and everything to do with handling it. China can't help there.
In any case you can't just take waste out of a reactor and toss it into a vitrification plant, much less ship it to the other side of the world. The waste is too sensitive for that. There's a reason why even in countries like France where nuclear reprocessing is common sites still store spent waste on site for a long period of time before sending it off.
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Can't really send it anywhere, it's liquid high level nuclear waste.
They would have to buy the Chinese technology, after just deciding to rip out all of Huawei's gear. I have a feeling the Chinese might insist they do the work.
Anti-nuclear sentiment (Score:4, Informative)
I am - and always have been - in favour of nuclear power. Somewhat. /. is demonstrably misguided.
But the unbridled enthusiasm ('nuclear for life') displayed by many on
Another example of the stupidity of nuclear. (Score:4, Insightful)
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More of an example of "failing to plan is planning to fail." The waste was never properly stored or managed, and as time went on the problem simply became more complex and ultimately complicated to resolve. Inconsistent commitment and support made the problem orders of magnitude worse.
Re:Another example of the stupidity of nuclear. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And because nuclear waste is essentially an eternal cost in human terms, that's not even the end of it by a long shot. Carbon, on the
Plutonium is a resource (Score:2)
You can make energy out of it. big wealth!
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Very little of it is Plutonium. I'll agree that not using that is a combination of silly and cautious, but most of the stuff is too low level for any profitable use. But it could be used as a source of low level heat. It wouldn't pay for itself, but it would get rid of the problem.
They should just rename the site again ... (Score:2)
They could rename it to "Sunshine" or something.
Or "Bright Future".
Just an idea ...